Best of the blogs

Maps Mania

The Grand Prize winner in the World Data Visualization Prize 2019 was an interactive visualization which groups the world’s countries using artificial intelligence. The Country t-SNE map rearranges the countries of the world so that instead of being geographically positioned they are grouped by similarity.

The Map Room

Maps Mania

First Languages Australia is working with regional language centers across the country to build an interactive map of Australian languages — a map that uses the names and groupings favored by the speakers of each language. The first languages listed in the map sidebar which have small circular images include recordings and / or videos with recordings. These recordings include examples of first languages being spoken and first language speakers discussing the importance of first languages to indigenous communities.

Map of the week

Cards Against Humanity is a self-described “party game for horrible people.” As a protest against a border wall that is by any objective standard an ineffective waste of huge sums of money, they have purchased a plot of land along the US-Mexico border and hope to delay construction by forcing a lengthy eminent domain case. Since the wall is “12th Century Technology” they have also purchased a trebuchet, a medieval device (not the font) for catapulting objects to destroy walls.